Whangarei holiday Christmas/New Year 2016/17

A week or so before Christmas, Martin and I headed up to Whangarei to spend time with his parents.  We broke the journey resting for a few hours in Wellsford Library - the staff their were hugely generous, giving us a meeting room all to ourselves and generally being really helpful.

Dad's vege garden's doing really well

I got my daily 30+ minutes in the sun in the hammock chair straight outside the room we were using.  Martin got through a lot of reading and I made good progress on my current sewing project.

Some days Mum and Dad joined us, too.

 The highlight for me was swimming at Onerahi beach.

Finishing our picnic lunch under a pohutakawa and getting ready to get in the water :-)

That's me and Martin's parents in the water behind Martin.  We had a gorgeous day for it!

Mum's preferred way to 'swim' in cold New Zealand waters :-)

Resting after swimming - in the beach wheelchair.

We also greatly enjoyed visits from two lots of friends from university days: the Tearle family live in Boston but were visiting relatives near Whangarei and dropped by for an hour or two; and Aaron and Susan McCloy came down from Kaitaia especially to spend the afternoon with us!

Christmas lunch

The pohutakawa out Mum's kitchen window

 

Dad and Martin enjoyed an afternoon at the cricket watching Bangladesh play a NZ eleven (at least I think that's who was playing - cricket's not my thing!)

While we were there, Martin helped Mum choose a suitable bicycle to buy - she's loving the freedom it's given her :-)

Sadly, on the way home, Wellsford Library was closed for their Christmas/New Year break.  We rested, instead, in Centennial Park in Wellsford.  This worked pretty well (and has made us realise we can probably manage longer trips in the future by taking rest breaks in parks), but there was a biting wind that eventually got to me: next time we'll take a tent :-)

 

Back home, we enjoyed lighting our Advent candles most evenings until Epiphany.